{"id":76704,"date":"2014-05-17T04:34:54","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T08:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=76704"},"modified":"2014-05-17T10:17:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T14:17:58","slug":"the-middle-muddle-in-anticipation-of-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/the-middle-muddle-in-anticipation-of-clarity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Middle Muddle: In Anticipation of Clarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

We’ve got storms, everywhere we look. We’ve got rain storms, wind storms, and fire storms.* We’ve got flooding and oil leaks and unseasonal temperature extremes. Southern California is a tinderbox,\u00a0over a hundred thousand\u00a0homes in jeopardy, while frack-happy Oklahoma has had over 140 earthquakes in these first months of 2014. We’ve got melting ice caps in the arctic (think polar bears) and a disintegrating Antarctic ice sheet (think penguins) with projections of both North American coasts under water by the next century.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalWe’ve got scientists and activists and even the occasional politico telling us that it’s too late to turn the environment back toward previous lush days of excess, but some, even Al Gore, say it’s not too late to help ourselves. If we will. Which looks like an uphill slog, not so much with the public — much of whom divide into two camps, either frustrated to the point of white-knuckled desperation or simply clueless — as with the politicians who seem determined to help the Koch brothers and their ilk squeeze a last few years of unimpeded profit into their burgeoning offshore accounts.<\/p>\n

It’s staggering to think how lethargic some of us are in the face of this emergency, most assuredly to our food supply and lifestyles, but more importantly, to our very species. Those who allow their Judeo-Christian religious preference to influence their common sense would say humans are not just a species, but THE species, given dominion over the earth. Seems to me that a careful reading of scripture would make it clear that even in their own tradition, all that power bestowed in Genesis\u00a01:28 was pre-apple, pre-fall.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I would argue that dominion hasn’t been all that easy since,\u00a0if ever it was, making domination over natural resources more of a jack-boot exercise than a declarative command. And there’s something almost primordially dense about begging God to bring rain to end a crippling drought while making no attempt to moderate the behaviors that have created planetary warming. Might as well throw a bone or two, as this\u00a0preview to an episode<\/a>\u00a0on religion in a Texas farm community from HBO’s VICE makes clear.<\/p>\n

More remarkably, there is a very simple concept at work in this dilemma that seems to have avoided any kind of clarity. When things are going badly, when it’s apparent that the hole we’re shoveling out is becoming more precarious, making life more fragile by the moment, common sense tells us we need to stop digging. Stop indiscriminate drilling, stop exploiting tar sands and polluting with coal ash, stop using precious water resource for fracking, stop stop STOP!<\/p>\n

Too plainspoken? Not enough pander to those who work for BP or hold stock in Exxon? This week presidential wannabe Marco Rubio positioned himself carefully on environment by saying he was all for technological advances but that he didn’t think they would affect tornadoes or hurricanes. Conservatives are loathe to accept any responsibility for the climate emergency we’re staring down, even when it drips with the influence of the oil lobby and its kin. Worse, the Kochs have put a good bit of pocket change into\u00a0attacks on successful renewables<\/a>\u00a0like solar and wind, siccing ALEC on those states with net metering and green energy mandates in order to keep fossil fuels at the top of the slag heap.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to get stuck on climate change, today, even though it is — by far — the most frightening topic on everyone’s lips. When headlines talk about points of no return and editorials include discussion of human extinction, it’s difficult not to be startled into a sense of anxiety, if not panic. But everything is a process, replete with unknown variables. Nobody knows what might happen to moderate what comes next. It would be better, in my opinion, if we spent more time working toward new paradigm solutions than fighting to keep the marching orders of a waning paradigm alive, or creating new resistance fronts, but we are still in the midst of our awakening: closer than ever before to real awareness, yet still too far from a functional breakthrough, with time apparently running short.<\/p>\n

Barbara Hand Clow tells us that the energies of this new era will shake us loose from this frustrating impasse we’re suffering. She proposes that our authentic differences — the studies that tell us that some of us are wired for conservatism and aversion to risk, while others of us are more trusting of one another and the future, based on brain chemistry — will no longer apply as we take\u00a0the leap. We are in the midst of the squares that serve as flagships for that change. She considers the purpose of the seven Pluto\/Uranus squares “to concretize the cultural ideals of the 1960s to break down the last five thousand years of the patriarchy.”<\/p>\n

The patriarchy footprint is easy enough to spot these days (let’s agree that patriarchy, in this instance, is the old codified behaviors that include opportunism, exploitation and manipulation in the halls of profit and power). There is, there should be, alarm that the inmates are running the asylum and any attempt to rescue leadership from the crazies is met with howls of constitutional betrayal and godless liberalism, although I know you know the right has a similar\u00a0checklist (Benghazi, Benghazi, black guy, Benghazi). It’s clown car stuff, but it’s dangerous. To quote Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce:<\/p>\n

There is far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party’s basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those (Nevada and Utah) deserts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seeking re-birth on the small screen, Karl Rove started a whisper campaign against Hillary Clinton, suggesting she suffered brain damage during that period when she was hospitalized after a fall two years ago. At the time, talking heads on the right insisted she was not actually ill but just in hiding, dodging questions about Benghazi. Unfazed by the notion that they can’t have that both ways, the Pubs are pleased to have called attention to Hil’s age and health, hoping it gives their 2016 candidate — perhaps Jeb Bush — an edge against Hillary’s popularity. For Jeb’s part, his wife has always been uncomfortable in the political spotlight and his daughter has a history of drug problems which neither want aired nationally. He’s an unlikely candidate but, amazingly, among the more rational at hand.<\/p>\n

Paul Ryan’s latest budget proposal gives us a look at patriarchy as it was configured at the\u00a0turn of the last century<\/a>. This is the school of thought that suggests worthiness as the criterion for state-mandated assistance, on the off chance any is to be provided. Ryan and his contemporary Jeb Bush recently told a group that friendship, along with traditional marriage and family, was the answer to national poverty. It’s a moral question, you see.<\/p>\n

To conservatives, poverty has its roots in deservedness — based on success as defined by the patriarchs, of course — which is nonsense, but has been used to manipulate issues of classism since time immemorial. Welfare reformers in the Gilded Age eventually realized that it was the\u00a0dearth of good paying jobs<\/a>\u00a0that created the working poor, not aptitude or intent, and in 1907, a spokesperson for the New York Charity Organizing Society declared, “We may safely throw overboard, once and for all, the idea that the dependent poor are our moral inferiors, that there is any necessary connection between wealth and virtue, or between poverty and guilt.” Only some of us didn’t, and to this day, those same adherents are fighting against paying a living wage.<\/p>\n

Larger inequities arise on the national scene as gifts from the political class, supposing an air of legitimacy that remains questionable. Responding to an overwhelming howl over data mining, the bi-partisan bill called the USA Freedom Act, introduced to both House and Senate and attempting to curb data collection by the NSA, looks good on its face but is\u00a0truly inadequate<\/a>\u00a0to the enormity that is the NSA project. Give the devil his due: this is the first formalized action proposed to reign in this shadow government run amok. It corresponds to a growing unease with institutionalized spying on, not to mention lying to, citizens, who have largely decided that the traitorous Mr. Snowden is a hero after all.<\/p>\n

According to Glenn Greenwald, whose new book put him front and center on the interview circuit this week, he is set to release more NSA details on precisely which citizens are being followed around with a bug up their bum (and I’ll bet my money on dissenters everywhere, dearhearts. Likely, you and me). This proposed Freedom Act is at least a solid chip off the block of plutocracy and the\u00a0financial control at the heart of our endangered democracy, but it does little to change our reality. This will be a success only if it is used as a starting point to shake the power structure, not an end point where the conversation can go to die.<\/p>\n

Crusty old Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed a bit of dissent of his own this week, going after Citizens United by backing the liberal cry for a constitutional amendment against unfettered political money in elections. Remember when we were truly scandalized by the thought of a million dollars spent on electioneering? (Yeah, I know — neither can I. It was the Bush years, I think. Time moves too fast and the needle has jumped off the graph too quickly. Some seven BILLION dollars went into the 2012 election. Think how many children that would have fed!)<\/p>\n

Since it takes a bi-partisan show of agreement to amend, this proposal will likely die on the vine, and pundits are accusing the Dems of taking a hint from Rove’s playbook, trying to change the zeitgeist by demonizing the Kochs and — oh shit, oh dear — big business itself (which makes me wonder how many folks out there besides the Pubs actually DO think the Kochs are upright citizens, simply minding their own business and exercising their political opinion to the tune of multi-millions in contributions. I would suggest not NEARLY so many as we think).<\/p>\n

The glitches are beginning to show up,\u00a0as\u00a0obvious as\u00a0a twitchy Stepford Wife in need of a tune-up. I had to snicker when I read that the Pentagon’s embrace of the climate change report had ruffled the feathers of\u00a0FOX News<\/em>\u00a0followers. Not for the first time, military advisors have found that climate change is destabilizing the planet and creating national security risk. Elders on the right do not approve this kind of talk, even as they fully immerse themselves in all things military-industrial complex, and it can’t fail to shake their iron-clad loyalty to the wisdom of military leadership. The veil is thinning, the “known knowns” gone all wobbly. If we’re fighting among ourselves, it’s because we’re fighting within ourselves as well. The absolutes aren’t nearly so absolute anymore. Black and white have inevitably begun to shade to grey.<\/p>\n

What we have refused to examine, festering deep within, must be dredged up and examined before that pent-up energy can begin to dissipate. Until all the information comes bubbling up, we cannot make a truly informed opinion. This is the kind of awareness that our journey in tandem with Chiron has brought us. This is that bite that we survive only if we are strong enough to endure the pain of allowing ourselves to be taught something we’ve long refused to know. This is the rattlesnake card in the Animal Totem deck: transmutation.<\/p>\n

These kinds of disparities illuminate our shifting consensus, our entry into the middle ground, where we discover our internal complexity and conflict. I see it everywhere, this weakening of the belief systems formerly erected in concrete: examples of the kind of thinking that insists the military is ALWAYS right\u00a0must question its embrace of the climate change issue, still trying to have it both ways\u00a0must break the template of absolutism to let in new knowledge and understanding. And, although these internal conflicts add to the confusion, perhaps it clarifies this moment that Hand Clow calls a breakdown of the last five thousand years of patriarchy.<\/p>\n

This wobble in surety\u00a0helps “to concretize the cultural ideals of the 1960s,”\u00a0as Clow anticipates. Awhile back, when Eric was speaking to this period as the antithesis of the Sixties — the conservative counterpart of that liberalization — I had difficulty seeing how that might work. Basically, I don’t believe we can turn back from our experience, unlearn lessons that have impacted our cellular consciousness and DNA. But adding up the impact of a dozen or more years attempting to turn back civil liberties for women and minorities, shatter community values and public commonwealth while promoting consumerism, materialism and militarism, it becomes obvious that our earlier idealism and communal consciousness have fractured along self-inflicted fault lines. We haven’t forgotten; we just can’t quite remember how to get back to the garden.<\/p>\n

Perhaps when Mars turns direct this week, culminating the end of weeks of self-examination and discovery, we’ll get a foot up on our need to activate our political will. We might suddenly realize how late it is in the game. Perhaps we’ll look back and see how much clarity we’ve gained, how much compassion has grown in us, how much fear we’ve put\u00a0behind on our journey. Maybe this is that moment when we clearly see that there’s no going back, no\u00a0mourning for what was never lost if we continue to inhabit it, moment by moment — no wishing for what we already have if we\u00a0insist it is not lost. Maybe Mars turns direct and we begin to step into our own power because we\u00a0are unafraid to claim it, unwilling to ignore it any longer.\u00a0We’re in process, moving along, even when it appears we’re stuck.\u00a0And in anticipation of clarity, everything is possible.<\/p>\n

*All of San Diego North County — San Marcos, Escondido, Carlsbad — was my home for decades. I know you join me in prayers and affirmations for a quick end to the current emergency and a coming together of community, local and national, to deal with what has become too normal an event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves We’ve got storms, everywhere we look. We’ve got rain storms, wind storms, and fire storms.* We’ve got flooding and oil leaks and unseasonal temperature extremes. Southern California is a tinderbox,\u00a0over a hundred thousand\u00a0homes in jeopardy, while frack-happy Oklahoma has had over 140 earthquakes in these first months of 2014. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}